Shocking news about large families!

Large families make kids short!

From an article at the BBC: "Having an older sibling, particularly a brother, can stunt growth, work suggests. Experts said the condition of the womb after the first pregnancy may be a factor."

I'm chuckling to myself because I got pregnant with Jacob young, after some years of partying. I'm guessing my womb wasn't in its peak condition at that time. Eating well, getting more sleep, and taking care of myself since has done wonders for the rest of my health--wonder if the ol' uterus is feeling better too?

Large families make parents die!

From another article at the BBC: "US researchers looked at 21,000 couples living in Utah between 1860 and 1985, who bore a total of 174,000 children. It was found the more children couples had, the worse their health and the more likely they were to die early."

Of course, this just MIGHT have something to do with the fact that postpartum care isn't what it could be, and certainly in the 1800s and early 1900s what we would consider the most basic tenets of good postpartum and other medical care didn't exist (antibiotics not available, hygeine and other infection-fighting processes questionable) many women died from infections and other postpartum complications that nowadays *should* be easier to prevent, spot, and treat. (The United States still isn't doing so great in this regard overall, I'll admit).

The links could also be corrollary--parents who have lots of kids may have been poorer overall, with less access to medical care or good nutrition. And certainly spacing babies too close together can be troublesome for a mother's health (and may not be great for the baby's development), particularly when it happens over and over. However, though it's not a 100% method of birth control, exclusive breastfeeding can delay ovulation and make "getting pregnant too soon" somewhat less likely.

But I'd have to see a lot more "proof" than these particular studies to convince me that big families, in and of themselves, CAUSE unhealthy parents or short kids.

I'm all for research, but studies like these are just meaningless in the context of my life. We aren't statistics, we're a family. To some extent, pregnancy and childbirth always carry a risk--but for those people who want to be parents, it's a risk worth taking. How are numbers from 1860--a very different time in medical history--relevant to my family's health today? What's the point?

And as for short kids, would Owen unload his older brothers for the sake of a few inches of growth? I know I wouldn't. Though that's easy for me to say, I suppose--as the fifth child born to my parents, I'm a few inches taller than my sister, almost as tall as one of my brothers and taller than most of the other women in the family. Anecdotal, I know. Maybe my mother's womb was in great condition after years of smoking, breathing second-hand smoke and knocking back Ernest & Gallio like it was lemonade!

I'll leave you with a link to the reaction of a Catholic father of seven. He'snd a man who obviously knows the ins and outs of data collection, statistics, and science reporting, and he's got some issues with the second study.

Edited to add: I thought this story arguing that most scientific studies are overblown or sometimes completely erroneous was especially timely!

What do you think?